I climbed the wrong mountain

[kmensch]

I was in the San Juans this long weekend for a few days to climb some high 13ers. After climbing Rio Grande Pyramid, Half Peak, Niagara, Jones, and American, I thought I'd tack on Vermillion on day four. I didn't do a lot of research on the mountain and had only photocopied some pages from Roach's 13er book for the maps and routes I thought I was going to do- I had not recently seen a picture of Vermillion, but I remembered the upward sloping summit ridge. After getting up to the beautiful Ice Lake Basin, I set my eyes on a peak that I was sure was Vermillion. After getting into a really desperate situation on extremely fragile rock and seeing a rappel sling on a tough 5th-class chimney (an expensive sling, BTW, with a new Spectra runner and two new quickdraws, so it must have been desperate), I began to question not only the route (I whimpered "This is not Class 2!" many times), but the mountain. I thought Roach's description was way off, but I often think this (usually because I'm off route) and I still tried to justify a few key moves and features.

I am often, probably usually, off-route, but I had never climbed the wrong peak. I finally looked at my GPS and it showed Vermillion in the cirque to the south. At first, I thought it was a bad reckoning on me and then I thought it was a mislabel of the mountain. I looked at my black and white copy of the map from the Roach book and was confused, but I had to make a call on what to do. I decided to keep climbing up through the the scariest 5th class moves on the worst rock I had ever been on without a rope. No holds were stable, the whole mountain was falling apart. The rock was the worst I have seen in Colorado, even large semi-permanent rocks were breaking away when tested. I managed to pull up to a small perch on the ridge above a small saddle above another rappel sling. I assumed I was on the top because there was a small summit cairn, even though there appeared to be a higher knob to the north (another case of poor reasoning).

After somehow down-climbing the rotten rock, this time mainly 4th class moves, I spent a ton of time in the basin trying to figure out where I was. Turns out I summited (almost) Pilot Knob, although I was actually on a knob just south of the true summit. I only figured this out after I got data coverage in Montrose and could see some pictures of the two cirques.

I learned some things: don't mistrust GPS, it's rare that you are right and the electronics are wrong, and when in doubt and are in a tough situation, really take the time to calmly figure things out with all of the resources at hand. I blame a lot of the poor decisions on lack of sleep at high altitude for the last 4 nights. In my defense, the north and south cirques are nearly identical in their features and peaks. I saw Golden Horn from a distance, but it did not look the same up close and I did not correctly identify it, I thought it may be one of the horns on the ridge NE of Pilot Knob (which I thought was Vermillion).

Anyway, this ranks up there as a situation that I am glad to have made it through, but was really foolish. Have others been in similar situations (newbie mistakes don't count), or should I stick to peaks with conga lines of people on worn trails to the summit?

[TravelingMatt]

Happened to me in the Gore Range once. Was trying to do C, ended up on top of Powell. I think I discovered the most efficient way to do Powell, in fact.

Sometimes I'll make comments in summit registers such as, "Hold on, this one is EAST Partner? Oh crap!", but that's just me trying to be snarky.

[Liquid Shadow]

Fascinating! Glad you made it out ok.

[CO Native]

Taking on a mountain with little beta is a good way to hone your skills. Sometimes I do this on purpose, other times it's a little less intentional. There is so much more to learn in a hard fought failure than and easily grabbed success.

[bergsteigen]

Yikes! Pilot Knob is a no joke peak! Glad you made good decisions to turn around when things got really rotten. Even the standard route on that peak is really rotten!

I rarely get lost. I like to say that my brain is GPS enabled! But, once every 10 years or so, I do find myself lost. First time was in the Adirondacks (as a noob). That was pretty scary to be so close to the trail, but be unable to find it in the dense undergrowth. The next lost adventure was on Crestone Peak a few years ago. In the pitch black darkness, I mistook a gully to the right (east) of the Red Gully as being the route. Thankfully I called it when the class 3 went class 4, and appeared to get more technical above. Turns out I found "the other red gully" in the middle of the Crestone Traverse. It did "go", but I wasn't comfortable with it, once enough daylight existed to show that we were not on-route.

One trick that might be useful for the future (so you don't have to stay on easy trails), is to load the waypoint for the summit, since using a GPS can sometimes be hard with dense contour lines to find summits with many surrounding peaks. That way you can always climb the correct peak, even if the route you chose may not "go". I find tackling peak(s) with little beta quite enjoyable and rewarding. Don't give up just yet. Best skill is the ability to turn around, if needed.

[boudreaux]

My only wrong peak is Malamute for Cathedral! Did Mt Evans from West Chicago Creek by accident. As we went up above treeline I kept saying to myself, where did the lake go, wow, it dried up? I kept consulting my map, but never put it together til I climbed up some un-named 12er and saw Evans a long way off to the east that I wasn't in Chicago Creek. That still didn't deter me and did it anyway, compounding the problem, but later on I decided that going back the same way was not an option. Went down the road to the Lodge, but no one was there, tried to hitchhike but no one would stop. Finally after walking more than halfway back to the TH, we got a lift. We saw a truck at the lake, but it was a rockin', so we didn't bother knockin'! 2 mistakes in 20 years is not too bad.

[boudreaux]

Taking on a mountain with little beta is a good way to hone your skills. Sometimes I do this on purpose, other times it's a little less intentional. There is so much more to learn in a hard fought failure than and easily grabbed success.

I do this too occasionally , makes for more discovery in your adventures!

[spong0949]

This is pretty funny. At least you'll have a good story to tell later. Also, thanks for the heads up. We're heading down to Ice Lakes area tomorrow and we'll try to watch out for where we are.

Sometimes on the summit of a mountain my friends and I pretend that we meant to climb a different mountain and act all mad like, "WHAT! This is not Longs Peak! You mean I climbed all the way up here for the wrong mountain?!" just to see how the other people at the summit will react. Mostly we just get laughs or people looking at us funny.

[flyingmagpie]

kmensch--
Don't worry. If you climb over a long enough period of years, you'll end up climbing the wrong mountain again! I think, given enough time, most of us do it. We just don't have the courage to 'fess up to it like you do! Most of us have taken some pretty bad falls over the years, too, that we don't like to talk about much. Take care of yourself as best you can, and climb on!

[Jeff Valliere]

Don't feel bad, it happens to the best of us. I have an excellent sense of direction and almost always can just look at a map once and have the terrain memorized. I rarely refer to a map or GPS other than to occasionally confirm and often bushwhack to get somewhere with the sole purpose of testing my skills. That said, it still has happened to me though, most memorably in LCW, in a whiteout, with friends, not paying close enough attention. We had even set up a car shuttle to do a point to point hike, but because of the weather thought better of it (good call, because it would have turned into an epic struggle being in the wrong drainage). Despite "confirming" the summit with a GPS, something did not seem quite right and I was a bit confused. Once home, I was embarrassed to report to my friends that we had climbed the wrong summit (though it was not toooo far from the intended peak ).

[Jay521]

I have to admit to doing the same thing this past weekend. Like Jeff, I always thought I had a good sense of direction and having been active in the mountains for the last 50 years, I figured there was no way I would climb the wrong mountain. Ooops. Happened off Marshall Pass - I was going for UN11282 and got UM11238. Had a nice view of 11282 from the top, tho. And an added benefit was a summit register dating back to 1996 with only about a half dozen names on it - one being Ken Nolan. It was kinda neat to put my name on a register with his...

[joelmpaula]

My friends and I climbed horseshoe two months ago. We were on the summit making jokes about how many people have climber horseshoe that were trying to climb Mt Sherman. We looked down and there was a sign on the ground that said Mt. Sherman on it.